One of my favorite things to do is take you alongside my personal growth journey. I share what is on. My heart, what I am battling with/working on, what I am reading to help you learn with me along the way. A big focus on my heart right now is this idea to think small, to dream small. It is counterintuitive to what I have always known and what is in my soul. I am a dreamer. I am constantly thinking as big as possible. At times, dreaming big has been a tough balance for me, though. I was finding that as I accomplished a goal, I celebrated, then put my head down and tackled a new goal. Even though I was accomplishing goals, I wasn’t happy. I asked myself if my life would be a constant cycle of dreaming and accomplishing? I learned I needed to find joy in the process of pursuit vs. the end result.
2020 was a year that pushed me off the rails, so to say. Systems and routines were helping me and allowing me to find joy in the small things. I knew my schedule and my husband’s and when we could support each other. While there were always wrenches that affected our systems pre-2020, those systems exploded. I was being pulled in a million directions and all of those systems were suddenly gone. Everything from emotional load, social/vacation schedule had once fueled me and were suddenly no longer there.
Today, as I have been doing with myself these past few weeks, if you are feeling and going through what I am and feel yourself thrown off course, I encourage oyu to dream small.
[8:36] What does dreaming small look like and how do we make it a reality? First, I need to give myself permission to stop, reset and assess what is happening in my life. What is working and what is not? When I can start to identify a problem I want to solve, it is usually motivation to plan determine how to get over the hurdle. Next, we get to dream! I share an example about running.
[12:31] Dreaming small is hard for me because I attached my worth to my achievement. If I dream small, I am achieving less. If I am achieving less I am worth less…aka worthless. I had a hard time mentally telling myself that thinking and dreaming small was OK. The size of your dreams do not determine your worth. If you accomplished nothing for an entire year, you would still be loved. The people who don’t truly love you will still not love you if you accomplish nothing this year. The people who truly love you will still love you if you don’t accomplish anything this year, too. There is still a part of me that needs progress. That is what I am talking about when I talk about dreaming small.
[15:13] My desire to feel better and “less-off” is more about recognizing where my heart is, where my body is, where my life is. I am obsessed with “The One Thing” podcast. A question from the podcast I came to always ask myself was, “What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it would make everything else easier or unnecessary?” This is what I did all of 2020. I started simple and going simpler and simpler. I share some of the answers I gave myself.
[18:40] I share my interest in Dave Ramsey’s principles and how they correlate to dreaming small. In one of his books, he discusses the seven steps in tackling debt. Dave often says, “Start with the lowest debt you have and tackle that.” That may not always make sense for you. For him, by focusing on paying off the lowest debt first, you are going to get a win quicker and that builds a magical thing…MOMENTUM! Then you take that payment and you tackle the larger debt even faster. It is not the numbers he is focusing on, it is the emotions. In the same way, I feel dreaming small sets you up for success and the strong foundation to be able to gain momentum. So, when I tell myself I am going to brush my teeth, and I do it…I say, “what’s next!?” Our mindsets are a powerful tool. When we dream small we are setting ourselves up for success, especially when you are at a point where you are in the trenches and you are the opposite of momentum and a strong mindset.
What does dreaming small look like for you? What emotional and logistical battles do you need to tackle to make it happen? What habits do you need to remove? I don’t want you to think small because it is easy. I want you to focus on something you are capable of and just aren’t doing that could be that lead domino for you to jump start the path of pursuit and progress.
Pursuit doesn’t always mean you have to dream big. I want you to hear me when I say: As you pursue you, those small dreams that you are dreaming up right now might be more impactful, more profound than you ever dreamed with your big dreams.
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